In Which She Develops An Unusual Fondness for Velvet

That's right, velvet, that heavy fuzzy material largely reserved for overdressed little girls, tacky vintage prom gowns, or ancient theatre-goers in costume jewelry and musty violet perfume. It started when I dropped into Palazzo Madama for coffee last week. One of the perks of having an all-access museum pass Abbonamento Musei 2009 is that I can enter Torino's museums just to visit the cafes, waltz smugly through the miniature model room and Renaissance altarpiece room and ceramics room without once looking around to get my money's worth of passive art appreciation out of an overpriced ticket. Upon deciding to enjoy said privilege on one lazy Tuesday afternoon, I flashed my card at the front desk, picked up a couple of attractive leaflets, and breezed up two flights of spiral stone steps to the high-ceilinged cafe to read them over a 5 euro (waaaay expensive) caffe shakerato, cold shaken coffee. Vaniglia o Bailey's, signorina? So tempting... but I have to pick up the kids from school in an hour... vaniglia, per favore, grazie. I settled into a cushy robin's egg blue chair and opened the "upcoming museum events" brochure to find a 10-hour weekend workshop structured around velvet and its role as a luxury material from medieval times to the 18th century. Make your own red velvet bag, just like the one in the museum's collection case!, it announced. And I read between the lines: Chat with old Italian grandmas and housewives while learning something about a weird history and craft!

Never mind that velvet has long been associated in my mind with tasteless department store girls' dresses, oversized Christmas bows, and general ugly.

I convinced a friend to sign up with me, and headed into the museum on a rainy Saturday afternoon with no idea what to expect. We found the chunky key that opened the glass case in the textile room; we found a nineteen-year-old fashion student and her boyfriend's mom who had signed up for the class together; we found a trio of spunky grandmothers who cheered us on for being gutsy young American girls, unafraid to try this foreign language and old-fashioned handiwork; we found a spacious corner room on the third floor of the palace, whose skylights and paned windows let in enough grey drizzle light to illuminate our chilled, busy fingers. Around 4,30pm a pair of babelicious tuxedoed waiters from the museum's cafe brought in green tea and biscuits on silver trays and white china. I leaned over to whisper conspiratorally to Carmen, a stern but twinkly lipsticked older woman well into her 60s and maybe even 70s, that I thought the cute waiter's deep bronze tan was fake, and she looked up slyly in his direction. Gave a knowing nod. Lampade, she says. Tanning bed.

The twelve of us beaded, stitched, chatted, asked each other about kids and recipes and grandkids and what American universities were like. Three hours on Saturday and seven on Sunday. Every now and then Aubrey or I would say something in English that one of the ladies would ask us to repeat more slowly so she could try it on later for her daughter, who studies English now. All the while it continued to rain, and one of the coordinators put on a Baroque cd in the background, and I had to finish sewing my velvet bag at home today because I spent more time lipreading Italian and beaming dopily at all the new life information being exchanged around me, than down at my work.